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Postings from October 2011
On 10/24/2011 09:37 AM, Tom Christiansen wrote: >>> The macro UTF8_IS_DOWNGRADEABLE_START has been in the core since: >>> df84a23b01be600297e1e5268d9351b807f107f6 > >>> It's understandable that this spelling has become enshrined as valid. >>> FWIW, it's never bothered me, a native English speaker. > >> I’m a native English speaker, too, and it bothers me whenever I see it, >> just like ‘referer’. > > Now you know how I feel about “numify”. :( > > --tom > numify rhymes (the way I pronounce it) with mummify, which is what happens when you have some Académie dictating what goes into a language and what doesn't. My grandmother (born 1885, raised on a Wisconsin farm) hated the term 'kid' when applied to a human child instead of a goat. I found that surprising, and when I look it up just now, I see her meaning down the list, and the 'human' meaning at the top. I cringe when I hear 'less' when the 'proper' term is 'fewer'. I recently had occasion to use 'pluralize'; I cringed every time I wrote it, but it got the job done. We are powerless over the vicissitudes of English, whose polyglot mutations are, I believe, a major reason why it has supplanted French as the required international language that everyone has to learn. Vive le sandwich!Thread Previous | Thread Next